Graphic Narrative Evaluation

Use this template to help you evaluate your project.

You should give specific details about your work.

You should provide both written and visual examples to explain your project.

You should find areas to praise in your work. Be specific about why you think they are good or why you are proud of them.

You should also find areas that could be improved. Look for areas that you could make better if you went back to them. Be specific about what you would improve.

Add additional slides as you need to. Don’t be restricted by what is here.

Any blank slides should be deleted before submission.

Does your final product reflect your original intentions?

• Compare your planning/digital flat plans/ storyboards to your final product

Overall I do feel that my final product does reflect my original intentions for my project. The amount of pages used as well as my intent for what is going to be included in each page is faithful to how I planed it originally. Their hasn’t been any significant changes that have had to have made or accidently made. I kept to the plan and all of the work has paid off. I am happy with my work. The flat plans where made with existing images along with a couple of edited images in them. I made my final product out of scratch.

Digital Flat plan.

Final Product.

How well have you constructed your images?

• How well have you constructed your images? You could talk about the overall visual appearance and well as the use of texture and colour.

I have constructed my story book illustrations and images using pixel art. This was a very easy process to figure out for someone who hasn’t got any experience in this but with the right use of colour and with a little bit of detail I feel that I have made my images appealing to a younger audience. The colours used are bright and vibrant and the way I have used them to create fields and the sky gives makes it easier for children to understand what is going on in each page. Blue, Green and yellow are colours used in a lot of children's books mainly because they are visually appealing and these are colours you are likely to find saturated in the great out doors. Green for grass, yellow for sun and blue for both sky and water. I don’t have any uses of texture as the illustrations used is very flat but I am still happy with what I made.

Cloudette. By Tom Lichtenheld.

My final product.

How well have you used text to anchor your images

• You should talk about the combination of words, images and text.

• The placing of the text and the images I feel I have perfected pretty well. It helps that I have already prepared in my planning document whereabouts I am going to be placing my text so that when it cam to making my illustrations I made sure to save space for my text so that my images don’t get in the way and I have enough space. The font used is a very stylised font that clearly works well in a children's book and it never looks like the font is just overlapping a image. It stands out very well and is easier to read. It creates a good contrast with the colours.

My Final Product.

Pirate Pete’s Potty by Andrea Pinnington.

Is your product suitable for your audience?

• Reference your proposal• Give an audience profile and describe suitability in reference to

content.• In my proposal I was aiming for my target audience to be no older

than 5 years old. Visually I feel that kids will enjoy reading this book as its both bright and colourful but also the book is very short. Kids at this age often have a short attention span and the fact that this a very short story with 8 pages kids are likely not to lose interest in reading. Originally I was planning to include a joke in the end of the story involving a joke where the story reveals to be a narrator telling the story to some kids but in the proposal I got a criticism stating that joke may be aimed for an older audience so I ended up taking that part of the story out and making it about a shepherd and his sheep.

What do you like/dislike about the techniques you have used?

• Reference specific tools you used with images• My entire book was made using Photoshop. To create my pixel art I

changed my image size to 180 or 127 pixels per page and I used the pencil tool to draw every detail of my illustrations in each page, I also used the paint bucket tool to cover up parts of a page in one go to help make the process move a lot faster. I liked how it was easy to use but I also enjoyed making sheep with this as they where really easy to put detail in. My problem with this process though is that it was very hard to be consistent with making sure every detail on each image looked the same as the last page. This meant that the bridges would often have a different structure and would not look like the same bridge that the sheep are meant to be crossing on. Also the colours would also look slightly different to how they where before and it was hard to make them look the same all the time.

The bridge has a different shape and theColors looked slightly different.

The Grass color is slightly looks different To the other page.

What do you like/dislike about how your final product looks?

• Overall I am very happy with my final product and how everything looks. It is exactly how I envisioned it from the start. Not only the pages are bright and colourful but I feel like I have done a good job in making sure the story makes sense and that everything looks like how it is meant to. However I am not too happy with my design for the shepherd as it looks weird and nothing resembling much a real human being. The sheep, grass and the sky look realistic but the shepherd doesn’t. The images could have also looked a bit more consistent with colour and shape particularly with the bridge pages. Some would look completely different to how they where originally and they did not look like they where from the same location.

Why did you include the content you used?

• Images, fonts, effects, colours My choice of images, fonts, effects and colours are mainly down to what I feel will do well when trying to appealing to my target audience. The Images are vibrant and colourful. The designs are not overcomplicated and have simple look to them so that children don’t get confused with what is going on in each page. The font is also very stylised and doesn't look bland like a lot of kids books do. It had a great contrast with the green and blue colours and I have made sure I have left space so that the children don’t find it hard to read. I have used pixel art to make this because its both easy to do and it gets the job done.

What signs, symbols or codes have your used in your work?

• Choices of colour, style, locations, character design and tone all give additional meaning to your work.

For the design of my sheep I have mainly used a white colour for the hair along with some grey in the bottom to give a impression of either dirt or extra coloured hair growing and I have also used black for their heads. For the shepherd I have tried to do a realistic skin tone but with lackluster results mainly due to my lack of knowledge on how to make a human being using pixel art which I shall improve on in the future. I have talked about my use of blues and greens but the colours I haven't talked about is the brown on the bridge. The brown was mainly used to give the impression of a bridge made with bricks which usually gives off a brown colour and I have also added in a sun which goes down and down as the story progress. Mainly because the day is going by. Just like blue and green yellow is another bright and vibrant colour. This makes it perfect to use as a sun and it blends well with the blue and green. However once the story has reached is conclusion it has reached night so I changed the look of the page by changing the sky from a light blue to a dark blue to give the impression of night fall and have replaced the yellow sun with a white and grey moon. Another thing I have done to make the shepherd that is very specific is that I have added in a Crook for the shepherd to hold as the crook is mainly the symbol that creates an impression of a shepherd to the audience and it is what shepherds use to flock their sheep. If he wasn’t holding it people wouldn't know who he is

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Audience ResponsesCultural competence:

Media texts require us to have a certain level of cultural understanding to be able to interpret them.

At a basic level, this could mean being able to read the language that a magazine is written in.

At a deeper level, it means being able to interpret signs and symbols that we use a visual shorthand to communicate ideas.

We recognise these signs in our own culture but find it harder to understand when looking at others.

We create and attach meaning to signs and symbols in many different forms.

Creative Media Production 2012

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Audience ResponsesCultural competence:

What is this?

This is a Norwegian Pine tree, covered in snow and with a red ribbon on.

Our cultural understanding allows us to interpret its meaning.

To us, in British society, it means Christmas, presents and family.

This is because we share a cultural knowledge.

Creative Media Production 2012

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Audience ResponsesCultural competence:

There are many other signs and symbols that we attach meaning to.

A leather jacket can imply rebellion.

A sports car can imply wealth and power.

A cross can represent religion.

Creative Media Production 2012

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Audience ResponsesCultural competence:

Visual representations of everyday objects are often the same the world over. A car appears as a car, no matter what country it appears in.

What that car means however, can be very different depending on your cultural background.

Creative Media Production 2012

Crook that the shepherd carries

What representations can be found in your work?

• How are men, women or children shown in your work? Does your work feature different ages, races, social groups or religions? Does a lack of any variety of character types create its own representation?

My Book does not contain any representation of any social group, gender, or sex. The only thing close to anything being represented is the shepherd and the only thing he does throughout the book is flock his sheep through the bridge. I feel no one will feel offended by this as this is what shepherds do and this is what they are known for. If anything this represents them very well. However I wasn’t very specific when talking about what gender this shepherd is supposed to be because there are female shepherdsworking as well and I wasn’t really specific with what culture this shepherd he/she is from.However representation doesn't matter in this case as it doesn't really anything to contributeOr progress the overall story.

What representations can be found in your work.

What style have you employed in your products?

• Discuss influences/ existing products• What visual style does your work have and why did you choose

it?The only influence I took with my project was the sheep. When researching pixel art before starting I looked up images of sheep made through pixel art and therefore it gave me a idea on what I should do with the pixels to make the sheep and what colour I should use. When practising through with story boards also using pixel art the sheep didn’t look right at all but this bit of research helped me gain a idea on what I should do instead. Other than that I made this whole book from scratch without any influence or any inspiration from any previous work.

Sheep for my final project.

Sheep I took influence from Before starting.

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-production and planning

• How did the planning and research help• How well did you manage your time• Reference specific examples

Planning helped me decide what I was going to make and how I was going to Make it instead of making it without preparation and being left confused and unprepared. Planning was a great way for me to test out pixel art and see ifIt fits my requirements and what I wanted from my project as well as what I Could do better. I managed my time very well which was helped by the fact thatI had 2 weeks to complete my project and I had 8 pages to work on my book which meant that I had plenty of time to go back and find out what I could do differently.For example the sheep I did for the story boards looked rather odd so that gave me time to research what pixelated sheep should look like. I guess my only problem is that I could have been given more time to look for another visual style to go withmy project but then again it might have taken up more time to make because pixelart was the only visual style I am good at perfecting.

What where the strengths and weakness of pre production and planning.

Historical and cultural context

• How does your work compare to what has come before? What other similar products have existed in the past? What current products exist?

As far as I am aware I am the first person who has adapted this story into the page.mainly because this story is very obscure and not many people know but also becausethe story is really loose and short and writers are more interested in adapting much moreLonger stories and stories with much more bigger scale whereas mine is just set on a field with a shepherd and his sheep. I found it on a website called World of tales where there are so many fairy tales and folk tales from different nationalities. This tale is from the Chec republic

Historical and cultural context

Feedback 3• What do you like about the graphics?• I like the more unusual pixelated style that you have chosen as this stands

out more compared to other children's books.• I like the bright colours that have been used to keep your target audience

interested in the book.

• What would you do to develop the graphics?• To improve you could add slightly more detail into certain parts such as

giving the sheep different facial expressions to show your audience their mood.

• You could also make the text slightly bigger so its easier to read and fills up a bigger part of the sky.

Peer Feedback. I do agree that I could have added in more detail to the facial features so thatkids can understand where their faces where because they do look wired withoutthem. I also agree that maybe adding a shadow technique for the sun like how I did for the sheep may work well with the sun. However I do disagree on the font.I feel that adding a much bigger text not only takes away from the animation stylebut I feel that I find it a little ham-fisted for little kids. I can read it very well and I feel kids can read it too.